The MCS Farm

MCS is unique among NYC independent schools in having an award-winning sustainable working farm that has been integral to the curriculum for more than 40 years.  With 24,000 watt solar panels for electricity, organic gardens, and carefully articulated recycling program, MCS Farm is a model of sustainability in farm-based education. 

The MCS Farm is the school’s “country campus,” located 150 miles from New York City in the Catskill Mountains near Roxbury, N.Y. With 180 forested and cultivated acres and a big farmhouse, the MCS Farm accommodates one school group at a time. The facilities include a textile studio, nature lab, barn, recreation building, sap house, chicken house and historic stone house.

Together with their classroom teachers, students first visit the MCS Farm in the spring of their 7-8s year.  By fifth grade, they go for three week-long trips a year, one in each season.  In farmwork, nature, textiles and cooking classes students engage with the natural processes that support life.  For a week at a time, they live together in an interdependent community that relies on each person’s work to sustain the farm.